Why the AFL’s Greg Swann coup won’t save AFL Commission chairman Richard Goyder

Securing Greg Swann won’t be enough to appease the unrest between the AFL and its clubs. There is one person who still needs to go to complete the cleanout, writes Michael Warner.

Nothing demonstrates the malaise infecting AFL HQ better than the shoddy backroom treatment of Geelong great Jimmy Bartel.

Around the time Laura Kane was elevated above her station as the game’s football operations boss in August 2023, Bartel’s application for a role at league headquarters was met with a cold fish thanks, but no thanks.

According to the logic of the people and culture department that has helped curtail good decision making at AFL House for years, Bartel lacked the relevant “administrative experience” to be considered.

That makes total sense given Bartel’s six years as a Greater Western Sydney director and two as an AFL match review panel member (on top of a pesky 305 games, three flags, a Brownlow Medal and Norm Smith medal during one of the game’s most decorated playing careers).

Geelong great Jimmy Bartel now.

And taking a big mark during his playing days for Geelong.

As Collingwood legend Tony Shaw declared on 3AW on Sunday, Bartel (a consummate media performer too) is exactly the sort of person an underperforming AFL has been crying out for.

Maybe the straight-shooting Bartel fell foul of the boys’ club when he dared to question the match review panel’s origami guidelines after stepping down mid-season in August 2017.

Or maybe, as Bartel himself joked on radio last week, it’s because he’s not an APS school alumni or a lawyer.

Ironically, it was Bartel’s sage words eight years ago about how confusion over match review verdicts could easily be reduced by grading incidents as “football” or “non-football” acts (instead of ticking boxes on a matrix) that appear to have been adopted at league headquarters in recent weeks.

Brisbane Lions chief executive Greg Swann – the league’s new executive general manager of football performance – will no doubt bring some much-needed credibility to a floundering football department, but the rejection of respected football servants such as Bartel and former Richmond boss Brendon Gale is symptomatic of a far deeper issue at the AFL.

Kane’s demotion, Swann’s appointment and the long-overdue exit of inclusion manager Tanya Hosch will not be enough to appease the unrest.

Nor will the looming addition of Tom Harley, Ameet Bains or Simon Garlick as Andrew Dillon’s 2IC.

AFL CEO Andrew Dillon and new footy performance boss Greg Swann. Picture: Michael Klein

Will Richard Goyder be the next to go? Picture: Hanna Lassen/AFL Photos

The fish rots at the head and it is AFL Commission chairman Richard Goyder (and several of his lingerer colleagues) who must go to complete the clean-out.

It’s no coincidence that last week’s sudden restructure came as pressure ramped-up on Goyder and his own plans to serve another three-year term.

Mr Inertia has finally acted, but only to help save himself, not the game.

Dillon, understandably, ran to his boss’s defence late last week declaring that the former Qantas chairman had been “incredibly supportive” and that critics should heed the record crowds, TV viewers and club memberships under his stewardship.

But what exactly has Goyder had to do with any of those achievements?

Things happen around him, not because of him.

He hangs around, but he’s not present.

“The last thing Mr Goyder wants – publicly or privately – is another Qantas moment,” former Victorian premier and Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett warned on Tuesday.

“He is a good man and has served the game well, but the AFL requires change.”

The time has come for the 18 clubs to tell him.

Originally published as Why the AFL’s Greg Swann coup won’t save AFL Commission chairman Richard Goyder